I would sure love to know what Juwan Howard thinks, in retrospect. Does he still think it would have been a good idea? Does he think he’d be better off with a really talented guy still finding his game and learning to be a teammate, or with his two already very-talented forwards?
Again, I think even if we assume that Brown doesn’t come if Todd does, it’s hard to see him getting 20+ minutes with Livers and Wagner around. Telling a skinny 6’10" kids who like playing on the edge he’s going to play center is a rough sell. I think this is legitimately a case where what ended up happening was better for all parties.
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I’m guessing Howard would only put the ball in his hands in transition. And it would mostly be a freshman GR3 role on offense (3s and dunks).
i was suspicious about the G-league experiment and I am glad that it goes better than i expected.
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I think they are doing it right. Brian Shaw is a legit coach, and they did a good job of finding an array of former professionals to help steady the ship and give some guidance.
Like, it would probably be a mess if they had to play Kuminga, Green, Todd, Nix all together. But throw Jarrett Jack, who actually knows how to play team basketball out there…and it all works better.
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Regardless of how it impacts Michigan in this specific case, you definitely don’t want to see these kids paid for a year and then sort of disappearing if they flounder. Not every story is going to be a success, but it’s at least good to see that a kid who might have been at risk of getting lost in the process is trending on track.
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Interesting. Maybe this is a reference to other portions of the fanbase, but I haven’t seen much of that around here I don’t think. Especially when you compare it to the animosity (for lack of a better word) towards JC, which seems prevalent here and elsewhere (and I can’t say I’m completely above it to be honest). With Todd, it seems he definitely found himself a good situation and, like you laid out, it’s hard to find minutes for him here in the hypothetical alternative reality.
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It’s hard to fault Todd. He made a decision that he felt was in his best interest and got paid on top of that. He didn’t make a big production of the situation. And, it honestly has worked fine for both parties.
Christopher, on the other hand…well, he did want he wanted to do. Put on his show, got his attention, and then picked the worse program.
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My JC conspiracy is that he opted out of the season, but ASU isn’t saying it. He’s been out with a “day to day lower leg bruise” for 2 weeks now. I’m not doubting there was an injury to begin with. I just wouldn’t be surprised if a minor ding made him realize that what he had to gain by playing the meaningless games to end the season was not much compared to what he had to lose if he suffered a major injury.
Complete conspiracy here, I have no evidence for that being true.
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Yeah, I don’t know if that is true of this fan base. My frustration around Todd is that I think he was ranked too high by the recruiting services and in some ways set up for potential failure or disappointed because everyone kept telling him he was a sure-fire NBA player even though he clearly had a LOT to work on.
If anything, I think the way he handled his recruitment is about all you can ask for out of a kid in his position. He made it clear that if he chose college it would be Michigan but that he hadn’t ruled out the G-League route. He was honest and open about it - even if we were bummed by the result when it happened. (Note - this seems to be the opposite of the way JC handled things…though we’ll probably never know the full story behind the scenes.)
I’m glad that these G-league kids have an outlet and that it seems promising for their own development. I’m still a little skeptical about how this plays out over time both from the perspective of the kids that don’t get drafted or signed and also from the perspective of the NCAA. I think there will be an evolution here and hopefully it is in the right direction. Personally I think the draft-and-follow route that hockey uses is the ideal outcome, but we’ll see how it goes.
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In hindsight the Todd thing makes a ton of sense. Would he be getting much PT over Livers and Franz? No. Would we even want that?? No. Good move for all parties. The JC one is the one that “hurt”. Todd de-committing the next day was just bad timing and kicked all of us when we were down.
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Well, to be fair, he was on twitter a week or two before the decommitt complaining that people thought he wasn’t fully committed. But I’m not going to blame him for that. The environment he exists in forces players and coaches to sometimes play these games in public.
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Maybe this is crazy talk clouded by our current record, but I even wonder about the JC vs. Smith trade-off.
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You know, actually, that’s an even more interesting what-if to consider.
I mean - absolutely. Does Smith end up being a better fit with this team regardless of how you rate their ability? Really hard to argue otherwise.
I mean, the team seems to really like each other, seems like they don’t care who scores or steps up, and seems like the individual style of play for our players complement one another. Who knows how that chemistry would be with additions/deletions to the roster.
Either way, I’m happy with what we’ve got.
I don’t see why Smith wouldn’t be here if we had JC. We needed a guard regardless. IIRC we were looking for a transfer before DDJ transferred or JC committed (which were within a couple days of each other in April). Chaundee would be the more likely JC replacement
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In that case let’s keep it going. Chaundee vs. JC
Replace “Smith” with “Super 6th Man Chaundee”
Christopher went down hard towards the end of the first half against Oregon and took a long time to get back up and has not played since. He definitely got injured, though I agree considering how terrible their team is he may just opt out of the rest of the season (and said as much when it happened in that game).
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Very good point. Smith would still be here, likely. That said, and strictly with the benefit of hindsight, would we want to take the ball out of Smith’s hands this season and put it in JCs? No knock on Christopher, but the nature of a OAD guy vs a grad-transfer PG, when you have the other weapons this roster has…
Likewise here it would be impossible but really interesting to know what Juwan thinks about this or whether any of these alternative scenarios influence his thinking on how to recruit OADs and what kinds.